They say you need to see it to believe it, so cozy on up to the following gameplay video of The Elder Scrolls Online to judge whether or not this upcoming MMO belongs in the same league as Skyrim. The video’s commentators believe it does, and they spend over 20 minutes analyzing the game’s NPCs, lighting, dungeons, and voice-overs.
There’s also significant discussion (but no related visuals) about TESO’s character creation, which the commentators say is not in the same league as most MMO systems. Check it out after the break!
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So what is this game actually? Is it another MMO that is trying to focus so much on the single player and quest perspective that it neglects all other parts?
A game that tries to “innovate” parts of the mmo genre by brute forcing strengths of single players in there and sacrificing key components of group play, that actually creates the hook in the genre.
Sure you get a bit better question and more random things you can use that offer no real purpose, but i have that in my other ESO games aswel and they won’t nickle and dime me for minor updates.
It’s no surprise they are focusing on the console market, as the PC gamers know the ESO series tends to offer a lot of freedom and the better content tends to come out from experienced addon makers, free of charge. You won’t have that in the online version that will be heavily locked to modifications and alterations.
I personally find that you can’t even call it a MMO, it’s more a multiplayer co-op game then anything else. Sure it looks nice but that won’t get me interested, not to mention TES series strengths come again from a single player experience, not from a MP experience.
I see nothing to think this won’t be any different from swtor, at least in terms of retention rates and this time there won’t be a PC market improving the game for free.
Getting tired of all these mmo’s trying to innovate just for the sake of it and not even knowing what mmo’s really are, they are multiplayer games, massive multiplayer games not single player games.
Here’s the difference: ESO will be a phenomenal success, and WildStar will tank. Hard.
And this coming from someone who hates the Elder Scrolls series (or anything Bethesda-made, for that matter).
It’s a combination of factors, not just the strength of the I.P.
1.) The fact that it’s a new generation of consoles will probably incentivize those who’d previously always snubbed MMOs (the vast majority of gamers) to actually give it a chance.
2.) It doesn’t appear to have the typical conventions of MMOs which make the average person run away from them like the plague — doesn’t seem to be stats-driven, or cater to the min/maxing crowd, doesn’t make unnecessary PVE/PVP server distinctions, doesn’t have millions of quickbars cluttering up the U.I… in short, it builds on a paradigm which other games, such as Guild Wars II, have already laid the foundations for, before it. In other words, it may actually be good.
3.) Everything from the Xbox One “always-on” debacle, to Bungie’s Destiny, to the tacked-on online features in pretty much every single game in the next generation’s library, indicates a clear push on the part of the industry to make the MMO genre endemic to consoles (they are the future of games, after all). That means in six month’s time the word itself will no longer carry the “geek” stigma it still is trying to shed today.
4. I don’t know what their secret is (palm greasing, party favors?), but the fact is Bethesda have positioned themselves as far and away the most marketing-savvy developer in the industry. Their history as a company can be broadly defined with the release of a series of extremely poor—and more often than not, broken—games that then go on receive heaps upon heaps of critical praise (Fallout 3 made a mockery of the franchise, yet still managed to somehow receive several Game of the Year Awards). Now, I realize they’re only publishing this game, but imagine the miracles that kind of hype-making machinery can do for a game’s release.